Everglades National Park

On our way back from the Keys to Miami Jim and I decided to take some time to explore Everglades National Park. We drove all the way through the park, stopped in to the visitor's center and hiked a couple of trails to get a feel for the everglades. One of the things that I learned was that the Everglades are not a swamp, but a very slow moving river that once drained all of southern Florida to the Gulf of Mexico. Less than a third of the of the original everglades exist today due to development, agricultural use, and the redirection of water away from the Everglades watershed. Besides all of that the alligators were cool.